


it was a pretty good bad idea, wasn't it though?

by alltheworldsinmyhead



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gendrya - Freeform, Idiots in Love, Kinda, Light Dom/sub, Love Confessions, POV Alternating, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Vulnerability, as if it was even possible to have gendrya smut without feelings DUH, interrupted masturbation, or rather idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 06:37:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheworldsinmyhead/pseuds/alltheworldsinmyhead
Summary: Arya's stubborn decision to ignore Sansa's well-meaning advice and her own common sense has rather delicious consequences.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 65
Kudos: 354
Collections: Still Rowing: A Gendrya Centric Fanfic Collection





	it was a pretty good bad idea, wasn't it though?

**Author's Note:**

> Well, look at this. Yet another smut. I don't even know how it happened, please don't ask me. 
> 
> Title from Bad Idea from Waitress the Musical

> _Put your hands on my body, just like you think you know me_
> 
> _Want your heart beating on me, don't leave me hot and lonely_
> 
> _I don't usually give in to peer pressure_
> 
> _But I'll give in to yours_
> 
> _So I give you my everything and you keep on teasing_
> 
> _With that look in your eyes 'cause you know I believe it_
> 
> _I don't usually give in to peer pressure_
> 
> _But I'll give in to yours_
> 
> \- Peer Pressure, James Bay

> _I am fragile and unholy. _
> 
> _Open. Ravage. Eat._
> 
> \- Tanaka Mhishi, Literaly Sexts II

* * *

Sansa straight-up erupts in laughter when Arya tells her she’s moving in to Gendry's apartment as soon as her lease ends in May.

‘’I don’t understand what’s so funny about the situation.’’ Arya presses her lips into a thin line, feeling dangerously alike to their mother, as Sansa’s shoulders tremble and her cheeks turn pink. “His flat is way closer to the uni than mine. And his rent is lower.’’

‘’Oh, of course, you don’t.’’ There are giggles separating each of her sister’s words. ‘’Because you genuinely think you two can pull this off. Which is hilarious.’’

‘’Pull off _what_?’’ suddenly, Arya finds herself quite lost and confused, which she decidedly does not like. The whole situation is way too similar to their primary school years when Sansa was still her mean self and delighted in making fun of every single thing Arya did.

‘’Living together without admitting that you’re into one another.’’ Sansa chuckles a few more times and calms down a little, taking a sip of her tea while Arya tries to find a good response in her head. Something other than ‘_’I’m not into Gendry’,’_ cause that would be a lie and Sansa already knows it’s not true, because they got drunk on free margaritas on Uncle Edmure’s wedding half a year ago and Arya spilled the beans, whining about how Gendry looked truly unfairly hot in a suit. 

‘’This doesn’t matter.’’ It’s weak, but it’s the best she can come up with. ‘’He’s not into me. If he was, why wouldn’t he already make a move?’’

‘’Gods, Arya.’’ Sansa lets out a pained groan and rolls her eyes. ‘’We’ve been through it a million times already. You’re both so incredibly bullheaded, it’s ridiculous. One could cut this tension between you with a knife.’’

And Arya does not wish for the entire conversation to fall into this sinkhole (as countless did before), so she laces her arms on her chest and states firmly:

‘’We are friends. We are gonna be platonic flatmates. No funny business whatsoever. No feelings involved. End of story.’’

Of course, Sansa does not believe her. Even Arya does not believe herself, not truly. She kinda knows those words would bite her in the ass… she just has no idea how quickly it will happen.

*

July comes and brings a famous Oldtown’s heatwave with it, sucking the life out of everyone and everything. Margaery makes desperate streams on her Instagram to cry over her wilted flower garden and Nymeria spends her whole days perpetually hauled up in the bathroom, with her tongue lolling out and her paws in the bucket of ice There’s hardly any air left to breathe in the city; the buildings cast short shadows in which people crowd when they have to leave the blissful ACs of their houses.

Except, Gendry’s living on the top floor of the very old, red-brick townhouse where AC has not even been taken into consideration as something that could be potentially installed. During the day, the flat heats up like a furnace, no matter how many electric fans are turned on and, more often than not, Arya joins Nymera in her refuge, cooling her skin with streams of freezing water in the shower.

‘’You’re gonna catch a cold like that. It’s not healthy to change temperatures so rapidly.’’ Gendry warns her, but honestly, fuck him. He’s a damn Southerner and so used to summer heat that he barely pays it any attention.

His only concession to the temperature is that he has taken to walking around the apartment shirtless, which may help him but makes the whole situation even worse for Arya, so she does not feel he deserves to give her any advice.

So, when Gendry’s working late one afternoon, she takes yet another cool shower, puts on her underwear and flops down on her bed with a bowl of refrigerated peeled oranges, scrolling mindlessly through Facebook and re-adjusting fan’s range every few minutes to make the stream of air blow directly into her face. She feels clammy, overheated; fruit juice spills down her chin and onto her chest, and, when her sticky hand travels in-between her legs, she thinks that actually might be a good idea. It’s not like she has something more interesting to do until Gendry comes back and they will, once again, argue about the choice of the movie for the evening. Better to release some of this pent-up frustration than to stew in it.

It’s very nice, honestly. She lays down flat on the mattress and lets her feet dangle off the edge, wiggling her toes while she slowly works her clit. The fan hums softly in the distance and, when she takes her bra off so she could tease her nipples a little, she registers the faint sound of someone walking on the staircase. The cold air on her exposed skin coaxes a shudder out of her, making her close her eyes.

Even the heat stops bothering her so much.

In her mind, she paints the picture with the ridiculous, well-practiced ease; strong, rough hands keeping her down, crystal blue eyes locked with hers, a stubble irritating the sensitive skin of her inner thighs-

The loud thud of opening doors feels like a cold shower. And not the good one.

‘’The cooling system broke down, can you ima_\- fuck_.‘’

Arya’s eyes open wide and she shoots up to sit on her bed, her arms flying to cover her chest. Her fight-or-flight instinct immediately kicks in, and she’s just about the hide under the covers and simply yell at him for bargaining in without a knocking like a stupid bull he is – but something about the sight in front of her makes her pause for a second.

Arya does not think she has ever seen Gendry so still, so unmoving. He’s not a twitchy person by any standards, but he does not seem to even breathe now, frozen with his hand still on the door handle and eyes fixed on her.

His eyes, which are turning dark like the summer sky before a thunderstorm, pupils blowing wide. And he’s gripping this damn handle so hard that his knuckles turn white and the veins on his arm pop up visibly. Arya watches how his lower lip curls inside and re-appears coated with moisture and she silently, boldly, makes a bet with herself.

_It’s now or never, baby. You either win the grand prize or descend into the deepest realms of humiliation. _

But, as Gendry’s chest rises and falls in a breath so shallow it actually sounds like short pan, Arya realizes that the potential grand prize may be actually worth the gamble.

The balls of her feet slide down the mattress, her knees strengthening and legs falling opened wide, her womanhood pink and glistening with arousal, and perfectly exposed. Slowly, so very slowly, she leans back on her elbows, raising one of her eyebrows expectantly.

‘’Care to join me?’’ it does not sound like a question at all; it sounds like a sigh and like a dare and like the wall between them collapsing with a rumble when Gendry crosses the room in three long strides and slides in-between her spread thighs, covering her body with his.

And then he kisses her and all she can think of is that’s so, so much better than she imagined.

*

The sad thing is that Gendry truly has no one else to blame but himself and his goddamned inability to deny Arya anything she asks him for.

Because her moving in was a bad idea on so many levels and for so many reasons that it was hard to even count them all.

Before, even though she would sometimes stay overnight, curled on his bed like a kitten while he was laying on the couch and fruitlessly trying to fall asleep, it was only a temporary thing. She would drop in, do her washing-up in his washing machine (_There are always so many people in the laundromat next to uni, Gendry!_), beg him to make her breakfast food at 7 p.m. and leave eventually, letting him release the pressure by taking a long shower and pathetically imagining he’s thrusting into her perfect, petite body instead of his palm. It was uncomfortable and terrible, but he was managing somehow.

Now, Arya’s_ always_ around. She’s sitting next to him on the couch as he’s flipping through channels, his irritation spiking dangerously until she suggests they could just watch Netflix instead. They’re eating breakfasts and dinners together, arguing endlessly about who should wash dishes afterward. He gets to see her late at night, bright-eyed and a little drunk. Early in the morning, all sleepy and soft. Stepping out of the bathroom, warm and pink, smelling like his herbal shampoo that she keeps on stealing, not having the faintest idea how it feels for him to notice his own scent clinging to her.

Sometimes, he stays up until 3 a.m., listening to her deep, regular breaths through the thin walls and imagining coming over to her room, slipping underneath her covers and just kissing her senseless all over, until she’s screaming with pleasure.

All of this fucking domesticity borders dangerously close on _being together, _or at least feels almost like that, and that’s way too close for Gendry’s comfort. It exhausts him and sets him on edge, and he cannot really take it out on Arya cause, well, she gets really, really hot when she’s angry, so he takes it out on everyone else. Which is not healthy and not something he’s particularly proud of.

Not to even mention this constant anxiousness that one day she’s gonna walk on him jacking off, g_ods forbid murmuring her name_ under his breath as he sometimes does.

So, while this scenario is not something that he has never thought about, maybe he is really as dull as Arya likes to accuse him of being, cause somehow the possibility of the opposite situation has never appeared in his mind. Although, he suspects it does not matter much, as he truly doubts anything could potentially prepare him for seeing Arya like this; spread on the mattress and making those soft, little noises of contentment, her fingers circling in-between her legs, wet hair sticking to her bare shoulders and breasts. Sweaty and messy and arousing beyond measure.

And then, before his brain can even kickstart and make him apologize or run away or cover his growing erection at least- Arya does what she does best and completely catches him off-guard with her slightly-anxious smile and an invitation.

Anxious. She’s fucking anxious. As if he could ever, in any universe, potentially say no to Arya, naked Arya looking at him like she truly wants him. 

Her mouth tastes like oranges and her hair smells like his shampoo because _of course she stole it again _and she gasps openly when he tugs on the loose strands, pulling her closer. His skin burns in all the places they touch; he scoops her up into his arms, onto his lap, cradling the back of her head with one hand and running his other along the line of her spine until she arches and shivers, and her fingers are dancing from his face to his chest, as if she didn’t know where to touch him first.

It’s exhilarating and addictive. The last time he remembers feeling anything like this was when he was fourteen and tried cheap supermarket whiskey for the first time; there’s nothing bitter about Arya, but Gendry’s afraid she may turn out to be just as dangerous as the alcohol for him and far, far harder to quit.

Years of longing, months of dreaming… it does not even come close to how it feels, how she feels.

He kisses along her jaw, along her pulse point and the strained veins of her neck; he licks the hollows of her throat, her collarbones. It’s not enough.

He lowers his head to her chest, nibbling delicately on the undersides of her breasts before taking the hard pebbles of her nipples in-between his teeth, making her tug on his hair and whine loudly, one syllable stretched into infinity. It’s not enough.

She’s a bare, writhing mass of hair and skin and lips and sighs against him and it’s still not enough, there’s still something missing about all of this, something nagging him insistently, until a memory resurfaces in his mind and he grins, tightening his grip on her and hearing a satisfyingly breathless moan in return.

He recalls a conversation that he’s honestly surprised he managed to keep out of his thoughts for so long, as it has kept him up for dozens of nights; of the empty bar when the crowd has left and there was only Brotherhood, sprawled on top of chairs and on a sticky floor, tinkering with their instruments, and Arya, pouring them vodka with sprite and always making sure to keep Gendry’s glass full of soda so no one will ask him why he’s not drinking alcohol.

Somewhere in-between fits of laughter, their conversation steered into dangerous waters of sex and relationships and Anguy, high out of his mind, leaned forward towards Arya and sneered:

‘’You must be like a total bombshell in bed, right? Ordering the guy around to have him however you want.’’

And Gendry’s blood boiled in anger, red cloud obscuring his vision and he was just about to grab Anguy’s collar to yank him up and make him spit those words out, when Arya giggled, lowly and wickedly.

She set her glass down and crooked her head, feral grin painted on her lips.

‘’Actually, I’m the opposite. I think I rather like being manhandled in sheets.’’ Her eyes, dark and deep and wide on her little pale face; her soft, silky voice. ‘’But it only works satisfyingly if I’m with someone stronger than me, strong enough that I can be weak. So it happens like, never.’’

And the thing is, Gendry might not realize that then, but it’s quite clear for him now-

It’s not that he simply wants Arya. It’s not that he just wants to have sex with her, or be with her. He wants her _just like that_. Opened like a clamshell, her insides exposed. Grief-stricken, teary-eyed. Raw. He’ll have her honest or he won’t have her at all.

And he wants to be the only one whom Arya allows to see her vulnerable, without any facades and walls. 

Like this.

Like now.

So, once she peeled his shirt off him and he got rid of his pants, he rests her forehead on hers and-

‘’Glad you made this proposal, Arya.’’ He breathes out, grabbing her wrists and pinning her hands to her sides as she reaches for him. Their noses brush when her lips struggle to meet with his, but he’s easily keeping them out of her reach. Letting her squirm, feeling her wetness pooling on his tight and chuckling at the dissatisfied sounds she makes. ‘’Hey, hey, look at me.’’

Her eyes snap open at his sharp tone, eyelashes fluttering adorably as if she just woke up from a deep sleep. Her dark hazy stare meets his in an instant, grey on blue, and he releases her hands to cup her face delicately. 

_Lower down your guard, honey. Let yourself be weak. I’m never gonna hurt you._

_*_

‘’Because there’s nothing I want more-‘’ he whispers, his hot breath caressing the shell of her ear. ‘’ – than to make you scream for me, darling.’’

With the desperation she has never felt before, she uses his forearms to brace herself, digging her nails into hard muscles before she swiftly raises her hips up and then lowers them, sinking down onto his cock until he’s sheathed as deeply within her as possible, filling her up. His groan is low and guttural and his hands leave a path of crackling electricity in their wake as he drags them down her body to rest on the curve of her ass, setting the pace of her movements.

‘’Fuck, fuck, just like that love, just like that.’’ She can barely hear him underneath the wet sound of their bodies slapping and her own ragged breath. ‘’You feel so fucking perfect, Arya.’’

Somehow, when he’s saying her name right here, right now, it sounds so much different. Sharper, sweeter. A_rr-ya, _the ‘r’_ so _deliciously accented. Almost like a purr.

She lowers her head and their noses brush and she’s just about to kiss him, when he spreads his fingers on her hips and roughly pulls her closer, simultaneously thrusting into her so hard that her eyes roll to the back of her skull.

Arya’s quite sure she must be whimpering, but it’s awfully difficult to hear anything when there’s some kind of loud ringing in her ears and when Gendry chuckles so softly, pressing his lips to hers in a small peck. Her trembling hands rise to his face, her thumbs caressing the line of his jaw and all of it is just so intimate, so heated; like wet wood slowly catching on fire, the pressure builds within her steadily, arousal making every inch of her body tingle.

His kiss on her temple, so gentle that almost bruising. His fingers sneaking between her thighs, slipping on the slick flesh until they find the sweet spot right underneath her clit and press there, there, there-

‘’_There_, oh gods, just there, Gendry.’’

Her eyelids fall down when he nips on her breast; the muscles of her thighs tremble from the agonizing pace he’s setting. It’s just so good and then so painful and suddenly she’s so close that she swears she’s gonna tear up if she won’t come in the next ten seconds or so. And she won’t for sure, cause he’s just moving too slow, speeding up only to have her moaning in pleasure and coming back to this deep, lazy pounding that makes her cunt clench around him painfully and leaves her dizzy with arousal.

Hard and rough, and soft and deep, and she does not know when or why this happened, but he has her on the palm of his hand, ready to pick like a low-hanging apple. Ripe. Perfect just to sink his teeth into. 

‘’Please, please, please.’’ Escapes from her lips, her pleas like pearls on a string, round and small. She lets her forehead rests on his shoulder and bites on her lip almost hard enough to draw blood when he _fucking slows down_, his fingers drifting away from that perfect spot.

‘’What did you say, huh? Could you repeat, please?’’

She is going to kill him. No doubt about it. As soon as she’ll remember how to use her limbs in any coherent way.

‘’Please.’’

‘’Please_ what_?’’

She can feel laughter rumbling in his voice, the slight tremble of his chest against hers. _What a teasing piece of shit. _

But two can play that game.

So she places her hands on his shoulders and pushes herself away to let him see her; her blushed cheeks and wet lips, her jaw scrapped pink by his beard. Her bouncing breasts and heaving breath and trembling legs. He’s still holding her hips so she cannot move much, but that’s okay – there’s no fun in simply taking what she wants. The real treat is getting him to do it for her.

‘’_Please_, fuck me properly, Gendry.’’ She asks oh-so-sweetly, that her voice could’ve as well been dipped in honey. 

He cradles the back of her head with one hand and brings it closer, the tips of their noses briefly meeting in an Eskimo kiss. With eyes so dark and his smile so blinding, he looks so, so beautiful that she almost forgets what exactly she wanted of him and what they’re currently doing.

_Gods, he is the most handsome man I have ever met. _

_He will break my heart if all this means nothing. And I will let him, I really will. _

‘’With pleasure, Arya.’’

And suddenly, all fears and thoughts disappear, as she can do nothing but melt into his arms into a trembling heap as he sends her into blissful oblivion, a wave of relief and pleasure crashing over her when he curls his fingers _just right _and lets her ride her orgasm against his hand.

Coming down from her peak, she’s still in such a haze that she doesn’t even notice Gendry raising her up and moving both of them closer to the wall until her back slams the cold surface and she shivers, goosebumps erupting on her skin.

‘’Were you thinking of me, hmm? When you were touching yourself earlier?’’ his voice is still low and rough on the edges, but there is also a hint of lightness hidden in his words and she just has to chuckle at that, not being able to hide anything from him when they’re swaying in the same rhythm and she has her fingers tangled in his soft hair.

‘’I’m kinda always thinking about you lately.’’ She admits, moaning in delight when he flashes her a grin in response, lowering his head to take her nipple in his mouth and scrape it with his teeth.

‘’Good.’’ He growls, moving to the other breast, his lips relentless on her skin until her head’s spinning.

It’s almost too much. It’s almost too good.

But _almost_ is a big and wide world, and she also thinks she’s going to just drop dead if he lets go of her now.

Truth to be told, somewhere between admitting to herself that she maybe possibly had a crush on Gendry and moving to his flat, Arya had a terrible realization that she actually likes when Gendry tells her what to do.

Not in a ‘’I like when you order me around’ kind of way, more like ‘you are the only one whom I could possibly let to order me around because I like how your voice drops an octave lower when you argue with me and you get all stern ‘ kind of way. Which, honestly, was maybe even worse, because, while it meant she’s not becoming a push-over all of the sudden, it meant that Gendry’s somehow even more special to her than she thought he was. He had a power over her; the one, that none of her previous partners were even close to having and she and Gendry weren’t even together, for fuck’s sake.

So, when Gendry pulls out of her, flips her over and shushes her protests, she shuts up. She shuts up and raises her hips like he tells her to, and there is not even a single cell in her body that’s unhappy with this compliance.

*

She has the most beautiful body anyone has ever seen, he’s sure of that.

Like, girls are wonderful. All of them, no exceptions. There is just something alluring about them that escapes his understanding and each woman he knows is gorgeous on her own right.

But Arya, _ah_, there are no other women like Arya.

She gracefully lowers her head to bury her face in the pillow and her dark locks spill down, long and messed-up and silky in-between his fingers. Like that, her spine is one straight line of slight bumps rising underneath her skin, from the nape of her neck down to her tailbone. He kisses one of her shoulder blades, then the other.

One could think her fragile like a bird, with all those bones on display, but he knows better than that. Arya’s strong as hell. The strongest person he knows. Far stronger than him.

And those bones are not hollow inside at all – if anything, they are filled with steel.

Her head moves slightly and one gray eyes peaks from underneath the curtain of hair, slowly blinking at him. He can almost get a glimpse of a smirk.

‘’See anything you like, darling?’’ her voice is a soft purr, vowels so drawn-out that almost lazy. Every bit of her Norther accent makes its appearance and he can do nothing, but smile in response.

His hand slips from her shoulder to her back, down this entrancing path of her spine, until it rests on her ass cheek. And raises up – just to come down with a smack, its intensity somewhere between a pat and a spank.

Arya’s back arches and she half-hisses, half-moans, her face back on the pillow when he caresses the reddened flesh and chuckles.

‘’Plenty.’’

He knows that there surely a clever clap-back already brewing somewhere in this pretty head of hers, but he does not plan to let her catch enough breath to actually utter it.

His hands close around her waist and he lowers his head down to press his lips to the nape of her neck, inhaling their mixed scents; sweat and sun, oranges and herbs, and this perfume she has been wearing as long as he knows her.

‘’Can I fuck you again, love?’’ his words are harsh when his body is not; featherlike pecks and fingers ghosting above her skin rather than actually touching her. As she’s kneeling with her head down and her knees pressed to her ribcage, she tucks herself neatly underneath his frame hovering above her. And he can feel every tremble that runs through her limbs, every clatter of her teeth when she opens her mouth to moan:

‘’Yes, yes, please.’’

There are no other women like Arya. None come even close to feeling like she does, when fills her up, inch by inch, and her breathing turns into a series of short, shallow gasps. He wraps his arm around her waist and her body presses so close to his, ever bend and curve-fitting into him as if they were two pieces of the same whole. He loses himself in this want, this drive. In the image of her hands fisted in the sheets and the taste of sweat on her skin. In the sweet, high-pitch squeaks he coaxes out of her as he brushes some spot inside her and she starts to writhe underneath his weight, pushing her hips up to chase the feeling.

‘’Easy, now. ‘’ he nips on her earlobe, pinning her down again. ‘’Gods, it’s not a race.’’

‘’Maybe it should be.’’ Arya spits back defiantly, but all the bite in her words is immediately contradicted by how deeply she sighs when he nuzzles into the crook of her neck.

With half of her head against the pillow, Gendry can only see her in fragments; in a shell of her ear and one eye screwed shut, lip swollen from biting on it too many times. No matter how hard the urge to close his own eyes is, he fights it relentlessly. There’s no way in hell he’s going to deprive himself of this image.

‘’Well, I did promise to make you scream, didn’t I?’’ he growls and propping himself up to change the angle a bit, before thrusting into her hard, right against this spot she liked so much.

The wondrous thing about Arya is that, for all her thrashing and mewling when she’s about to come, she remains absolutely silent when she does peak. There’s only the sound of all air escaping her lungs in one long, trembling exhale, all muscles in her body taunt one second and loose on another. He’s quite sure he could watch her like that forever and never grow bored, never stop feeling enchanted by her.

One, two, three snaps of his hips and suddenly he’s spending himself inside her, his forehead pressed in-between her shoulder blades and straight-up moaning in pleasure. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, he registers her fingers lacing with his and her soft, softest of hums.

‘’That’s right, come for me, love.’’ He can almost hear her whisper, but all the sounds seem very distant and distorted. All there is, is Arya, Arya underneath him, so warm and sharp and perfect, pulling him off the edge until he’s falling, falling deep down.

*

When he finally rolls off her, she slowly curls on one side, yawning deeply from exhaustion.

‘’I’m so hot.’’ She whines, wiping a bead of sweat rolling down her face.

‘’Yes, indeed you are.’’ Gendry pinches her hip lightly and she half-yelps, half-groans, covering her eyes with her hand.

‘’Oh my god, why did I just have sex with you? That was so lame.’’

Her smile dies down and her eyes turn serious when she reaches out to lightly push sweaty hair from his forehead, brushing his cheek with the very tips of her fingers. There is a question written on her face, clear as a day even in the light of the setting sun spilling from outside and paining her skin red, orange, golden.

He catches her hand before she manages to let it slide onto the mattress and presses a kiss to her knuckles.

Arya, Arya, Arya. His impossible girl. _What are you even worried about? Can’t you see how much I love you? _

‘’My lame jokes aside.’’ His voice is low and quiet, and the sound of the fan running almost drowns it out, but he’s sure she hears him. She always does, even when nobody else cares to. ‘’This doesn’t have to mean anything. But it can. If you want to.’’

And whatever worry lingered in the pit of his stomach momentarily dissolves into a glee, when her face lights up in a way that has nothing to do with the sunset and everything to do with sparkles in her beautiful eyes and blush on her cheekbones and the smile blooming on her lips.

She raises both of her hands to lace them behind his neck, moving her head closer to his on a pillow and curling against him. She feels so soft, so warm. So trusting.

‘’I think it does mean something. More than something, even.’’ She whispers back, scrunching her nose adorably. ‘’It means that we should stop being stupid, because it’s obviously not working. Gendry?’’

‘’Hm?’’

‘’Do you – do you want to be with me? Really be with me?’’

Something in her voice reminds him of when they first met.

She was ten then, ten and unafraid of anyone or anything except darkness; they bumped into one another on an empty staircase when the sudden storm caused electricity malfunction and basked the whole school in black. She grabbed his hand with hers, much smaller and sweaty, and asked him if he can help her down the stairs.

He has never heard Arya so vulnerable as then. Up until now.

‘’I must’ve not done a very good job at showing you how I feel about you, if you have to ask me.’’ He rests his forehead on hers, settling his hand on the dip of her waist and curling his fingers around it possessively. ‘’My love.’’

Her breath hitches. He closes his eyes.

‘’Is it a good enough answer to your question?’’

‘’Yes.’’ She breaths out; her lips taste salty on his, but he keeps his eyelids down. Arya hates when people see her cry. ‘’But I guess you still need to show me again.’’

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this story; if so, please, please, please drop me a comment! Your feedback is what keeps me going <3


End file.
